Need More Traffic to your website?
Ask any business owner what they want more of and one of the responses will be more traffic. The reality is that even with an astounding product line or excellent customer service, you need traffic to your website. More specifically, you need traffic from your target audience to see any meaningful results.
Given how competitive the digital landscape is, increasing traffic to your website is a constant challenge for many businesses. Here we look at 6 quick tips both organic and paid, that you can implement to bring more visitors to your site.
1. Optimise On-Page Factors
Google is the most popular search engine by far, processing billions of search queries a day. Ranking for your target keywords can drive a considerable amount of traffic to your landing pages. But your pages need to be properly optimised to have any chance of ranking in the search results. Fortunately, this is the easiest and usually quickest way to get more traffic to your site.
Start by Optimising the following factors on your site:
Titles: The title is perhaps the most important as it is the first thing that visitors see. Optimise your titles to include the keywords you are targeting and make it engaging to increase click through rates.
Meta descriptions: These are the short snippets of text that appear underneath the page titles in the search results. Include your target keywords here and a call to action to get visitors to click through.
Headers: Headers give search engines a better understanding of what a page is about. Headers are also useful to improve readability as they break up blocks of text.
Content: Optimise your content to include your primary keywords as well as related phrases. But be careful not spam your content either as doing so could result in a ranking penalty.
Here is an example that illustrates what an optimised page looks like:
Optimise these factors for each factor to improve the SEO of your site.
2. Start Blogging
Blogging is beneficial for numerous reasons.
Publishing insightful content that delivers value establishes your business as an authority and increases brand awareness. Another reason to start blogging is that it has been proven to attract more sales. In fact, B2B marketers that blog regularly generate 67% more leads than those that don’t.
So what can you blog about? There are tons of ideas but here are a few to get you started:
- Industry news
- Event coverage
- Comprehensive guides
- Answers to questions
- List compilation
- Product reviews
- Case studies
Get started with some of these ideas to start publishing content on your site. Remember to optimise the on-page factors for each post to get them ranking. The key here is consistency, not volume, google bots usually like to crawl sites that are updated with fresh content regularly more often.
3. Guest Blog on Authority Sites
Guest blogging is a very effective way to increase traffic and build brand awareness in the process. Another added benefit is building a relevant link back to your site which helps your site rank higher in the search results. This strategy requires more effort but the results are well worth the effort.
Search for “your primary keyword + submit a guest post” to find authority sites you can publish to. Here is an example:
Conveniently enough, there are sites that even compile a list of sites that accept guest posts. Be sure to read all submission guidelines before you start writing any content. Sites generally see their rankings and traffic improve the more backlinks you receive from guest posts on high quality, relevant sites.
4. Get Active on Social Media
The following chart from Pew Research Center illustrates just how prevalent social media usage is among online users:
Facebook is the most popular social media network by far but others are gaining in popularity. Use social channels such as Facebook and Twitter to promote your content and build a following to your brand.
The key though is being consistent with a posting schedule. One post on Facebook simply won’t be enough to increase traffic (unless it goes viral). But posting engaging content on a regular basis gives google the social signals it looks for to distinguish between relevant sites and not-so-relevant sites. Getting active on social media not only helps bring more traffic to your site but also has a positive effect on your rankings on google and therefore improves visibility which then brings in more traffic.
5. Advertise With Paid Search
The strategies described above are several ways to increase search traffic organically. The downside is that each takes time to implement and results are often not immediate. For example, if your site is still relatively new it could take time for your blog to start gaining authority and ranking.
Paid search, on the other hand, involves using search platforms such as Google AdWords to bid on relevant keywords and create targeted ads.
Here is an example of ads that display when searching for “outdoor furniture”:
Someone searching for outdoor furniture would see ads that are relevant to their search query. The benefit of advertising with AdWords is being able to target online users searching for your products or services. If you're looking to significantly boost traffic to your site over a short span of time, paid traffic is the way to go. But be prepared to set aside a sizable budget.
6. Cleanup Your Link Profile
Have your rankings taken a hit in the search results?
It may be a result of an algorithm penalty.
One of the most common causes of ranking penalties is due to low quality links from spammy sources. Such practices may have worked before in increasing rankings. But the Penguin update now penalizes sites engaged in questionable link building practices.
If your rankings are noticeably lower, start by cleaning up your link profile. Use tools such as Ahrefs to see an overview of links to your site.
Look for any links from questionable sources and take steps to get them removed. Send a request to the webmasters to have the links removed or use the Disavow Tool which tells Google to ignore links that you designate. The good news is that Penguin now runs in real-time so once you remove any low quality links, your rankings should start to rebound.
Conclusion
There is simply no way around it.
To generate more sales you need targeted traffic to your website. Even with the lowest prices, your site will likely fail to gain any traction if prospects are unable to find it. The strategies detailed here are all proven ways to increase website traffic. Implementing just one of them is enough to give your business a major competitive advantage. The key is to be consistent with your efforts to start seeing measurable results.